Ah, confusion. You simultaneously claim that the rules are for the illegals' protection, that it's wrong to abuse them (I haven't however, at any point advised abusing anyone), and then when faced with the reality that kicking them out of the country worsens their plight, well, too bad, because:

"Well, that is not really my problem..its theirs."

--Now, you are right that there are always corners of the world worse than the USA, and we can't have everyone here. But the reason I bring up this issue (that getting underpaid in the USA beats their chances elswhere) is because people should stop claiming they're trying to help out the migrant workers by kicking them out. Say you want to protect the USA and your wages and enforce the law. But the "help them out" stuff should stop. Further, it's worth noting that the whole world isn't trying to come here. The market, travel realities, and our rules put a brake on such things, and I'm not concerned we'll have to house everyone. We haven't, and this has been going on for hundreds of years, right?

"and we keep getting accused of "cultural imperialism" when we try to make things better elsewhere...classic Catch 22."

--No; we are not catching heck for food drops or our genocide intervention (such as it was) in Africa; we catch heck for invading countries and watching chaos ensue.

"Things are often rough for alot of people-----but I doubt you would be cool with it if I broke into your place and squatted there for awhile if I lost my job, the mob was after me and I needed medical help."

--Nonsequitor.

"No, I'm saying that essentially arguing that 100-200 years ago we imported a lot of people is no longer relevent to decsion making today---after all you use up-to-date treatment methods in your job don't you?
You don't look at 150 year old pharma text to decide what drugs and amount, drug interactions etc to give people right?"

--The fact that we have always been importing cheap labor DOES matter, and as for medical history, yes, we use up to date knowledge, but themes (and we're talking about a theme here) recur and do matter: how poverty, research, lifestyles and sexual behavior affect health are good examples. It's as if you'd throw out history when thinking about an invasion (say, of Iraq). You would post another wink smiley and smugly ask if we should use swords when we go in--and the answer is no, you use modern weapons and you either know the region's history and the allliances or you get bogged down in a mess for the next 10 years.

Didn't say you did--what I said was...essentially...that it was disengenious to object/frame people being concerned about abuse of illegals when they are in point of fact being abused...its very real and I really don't like it.
Huge numbers of illegals are a bad situation for everyone involved---and that includes the illegals themselves.

Never said or even suggested that you supported ANY abuse of illegals.

"People claiming that they are helping the migrant workers by kicking them out."

I never said that.....and I most certainly, quite specifically was talking about illegals--not "migrant workers" that could of course be here perfectly legally.

And there is a serious difference between kicking a criminal out of country in which they are illegally present and "worseing their plight."
Sure that makes things worse for them---but its hardly anyones fault--other than their own.

Lets go back to my example----you come home from a hard days work and find that I have broken into your home and have decided to live there---I've lost my job, I have no medical coverage and I'm wanted by the mob for outstanding gambleing debts---so I have decided to squat in your place.
Kicking me out will certainly "worsen my plight"----do you still call the police to remove me?

BTW so not a "nonsequitor" its just highlighting the essential/fundemantal issues by bringing them into personal focus.
We sometimes get so lost in the size of the situation that we tend to forget that at base its really pretty simple---regardless of my personal problems I have no right to break into your home and live there without your express permission......a nation should have no fewer rights than you expect of your personal space.

And no, we get accused of "cultural imperialsim" all the time---we can't win--Mexico actually shoots people trying to cross its Southern borders--yet they lecture us about human rights...sheesh.

But AGAIN, its irrelvent---actions taken in the past for very specific reason should not dictate future actions--we can't really look at imigration policy in the 1890s and use it make decsions in 2008 anymore than we can look at voting policy in the 1890 and use it to decide whom gets to vote in the 2008.

I'd love to be paying 50 cents a gallon for gas---but since its 2008 I can't really expect the historical fact that it used to cost that to be preserved forever......our immigration policy/policies have to be viewed in light of todays problems and future challanges---not 100's of years in the past.

Besides, your overlooking at serious differences--2 of them in fact.

1-Since your arguement invloves "cheap" labor--there are plenty of legal immigrents to do those jobs----jobs likely taken by illegals I might add.

Some, perhaps most, would acknowledge that history teaches us lessons, but you're free to disregard them. For example, since you brought up gas, the 70s taught us that middle east politics and policies can tighten supply and create hoarding binges and long lines. But I'm sure that middle east politics and gas shortages will never bother us in the future, so let's agree to disagree about the value of history.

WRT to your hypothetical squatter, the situation is so different from illegal immigration that it's not really useful. There is an immediate security risk from having a wanted stranger in your living room, and he's trespassing. You call the police. When a nation has illegal immigrants, the question isn't whether they legally can toss them (of course they can!) but whether it is worth the time and money to do so, given that they do contribute to the economy, that most are law abiding, and that they seem to fill a niche. Sure there are risks, but not that different from the risks of our citizens, from what I've heard. They're also hard to get rid of--just like drugs. While I would vaporize all dangerous drugs if I had a magic wand, I don't, and so I'm in favor of legalization, because I think it would be cheaper and more effective.

And WRT to kicking people out and worsening their situation, I didn't say you couldn't... I said (clearly, I thought) that its disingenuous for people to say they want to end illegal immigration because they want to help out these illegal immigrants who are being abused. That's BS. Just say you want to defend the law and American workers, which is plenty enough of an explanation.

WRT to your two points, I doubt that illegal immigration is a purely modern phenomenon, and if it were, the historical point is that cheap relatively untrained labor has its place in the economy (else, they wouldn't come here). There was also the massive illegal immigration that was forced upon Africans, obviously, but that's another matter. As for your assertion that there are sufficient legal migrant workers to do all the work, one wonders why people keep streaming into the country looking for work. They seem to find it even when they lack the advantages of citizenship. This makes me doubt the claim that the legal migrant workers have saturated the lower skills worker market.

Nobody is questioning that "history teachs lessons"......what I'm suggesting is that basing immigration policy in 2008 on immigration policy in 1890 is probably a bad idea.

Nope, still not the point--we were dicussing the ethics/legality of the situation of the whole "making the situation worse" thing....at no point in our previous discusison had you so much as mentioned your new argument the "worth the time and money" to round them up thing.

In terms of direct threat---guy squatting in your house is less a direct threat than millions of people squatting illegally in the nation----sheer large numbers would strongly argue that at least "some" of them are deadly and direct threats....as would the growing threat of gangs, the actual deaths att he hands of illegals commting crimes and those deaths ands injuries at the hands of illegals by accident.

And if the lesson of the Border States is any guide--since you have quite rightly pointed out that history is a good guide....cracking down hard on those that employ illegals seems to work well...eliminate the jobs and many will move on without having to "round them up" at all.

But why must there be only one motivation?.......presumably you do the job you do for more than one reason...presumably you date the people you chose for more than one reason.....presumably you have more than one reason for doing many things...why can't other people?
I'm opposed to illegal immigration for many reasons.....and one of them is that illegal immigration leads to abuse of the illegals---both in their own nations and once they get here.

Back to history----not exactly, in the past we imported "cheap..untrained labor" but we did so legallyVast difference.

It also has nothing to do with the odious history of slavery---a practice BTW generally confined to a specific regions and social castes----"most" people never owned slaves and many Americans were basically slaves of the indentured servent practice themseleves.....and we fought a horribly destructive war to free the slaves in any case.

I simply disagree that illegals "contribute to the economy" in proportion to what they take out...again, what I hear from the Border States is that they are a massive and deeply harmful drain.

I BTW never claimed that "legal migrant workers have saturated the lower skilles worker market."........its a sort of Greshims law for human labor...sort of, not an exact match of course.

(instead of bad money driving out good---really cheap illegal labor would likely drive out more expensive legal workers--assuming the skills were even ballpark its hard to imagine that it would not)

Besides, as far as "lower skills" nobody is saying that illegals have "lower skills" than legal migrant workers----I'm just asserting that their illegal status makes it more likely that they will be paid less than a legal worker--thus hurting the legal migrant and given the employer an illegal (pardon the pun) competitive advantage....which IMO is not that different from allowing business/employers from illegal cutting cost in a any other area......illegal dumping etc.

In terms of direct threat---guy squatting in your house is less a direct threat than millions of people squatting illegally in the nation

A guy squatting in your house doubles your adult population or increases it by half. There's nothing like that going on. There aren't 250 million illegals or even 125 million. The reality is more comparable to a family of rats moving into your house. It's not ideal, but nothing like having a strange person suddenly start sleeping in your house.

It's more like you wake up one day and discover a small child has been washing your dishes, mowing the lawn and living on your garbage scraps and hiding in the basement undetected for the past 3 years.

Yeah, if how many people could be supported by the availble land that was the question under discussion....but it was not.

We were not and are not talking about ultimate carrying capacity.

The section you quoted delt with my response to IJ about the potential danger of illegals----and single person squatting in your house may or may not be an actual threat----increase the numbers to millions of people and the chances of a few of them being real dangers increase dramatically.

And nobody "wakes up one day and finds that a small child" has been doing the work......if someone has been takeing such advantage of "children" then they deserve to be harshly punished.

Such abuse is exactly one of the things that bothers me---illegal immigration is hurtful to everyone involved--inculding the illegals themselevs.

Nope, we're talking about the fact that the damage they can do on the scale of society is much less than the damage one person can do on the scale of your household.

Quote:

And nobody "wakes up one day and finds that a small child" has been doing the work......if someone has been takeing such advantage of "children" then they deserve to be harshly punished.

No, of course they don't. But we're apparently just now waking up to the fact that people who are desperate for a shot at a decent life have been hiding out in this country's basement, doing our menial chores and trying to stay unnoticed.

CXT, if your point about the squatter the whole time was that illegal immigration is illegal, then power to you. No one's said otherwise. I have, meanwhile, been wondering more about what to do than just point to the law. Just as Bill would talk about driving safety instead of merely expecting a ticket at 56mph in a 55.

And if your point about history is that we shouldn't 100% base current policy on 1890's policy, super, no one has been dumb enough to endorse that plan either.

As for illegals and their crimes, I haven't heard they're more prone than others, so if you want to argue that more people = more crime, super, we should start culling native-born Americans. I've argued that birth control is the best enivronmental solution available several times in the past.

"Such abuse is exactly one of the things that bothers me---illegal immigration is hurtful to everyone involved--inculding the illegals themselevs."

You keep repeating this as if we haven't addressed it ten times.... illegal immigration is not hurtful to the illegal immigrants, as judged by the people in the best position to know--the illegal immigrants. If it was horrible, they'd stop coming. Get it? If you throw them out to better their plight, you actually make it worse. So say you want to throw them out. Say its to save the crowded ERs and improve the tax base and to support the law--that's cool with me, really. But, for the tenth time, let's drop this nonsense that it hurts illegals to employ them in the states. Their situation might be subpar, and it might be second class, but is sure is a favor compared to the alternative. Done!

What to do about illegal immigration is really complex and factors in a bunch of things none of us really know about adequately:

--how much difference we CAN make
--how much those efforts would cost
--how much their work contributes to the economy, including taxes
--how much they are a drain on the economy, with effects on health care costs, crime, education, and so on
--whether those costs could be mitigated by providing, say, limited basic healthcare preventively rather than rescue healthcare without limit.

I'm sure they are expensive and do affect legal worker's wages (though not below minimum, right?), but I'm also sure that importing everything from china or letting US companies set up shop in mexico hurts US workers, our tax base, our deficit, our debt. It's basically the same thing--going for less skilled cheaper foreign labor. So, what? We outlaw chinese massproduced stuff or have a tariff war or what do you propose as the simple solution? It's a global economy these days.

But Val--its was an small personal example to illustrate a larger problem----if one person is damaging to your personal space them millions would (at least) just as potentialy damaging to a wider area.

Where do you get that?
Most people I know have been "aware" of illegals and their problems and the problems they cause for many years.

Please recall that your the guy that keeps wanting to introduce those concepts into the discussion.
You introduced history and your the guy that introduced the whole "makeing things worse" thing.
I've just been responding to your statements.

I never said they were more "prone" to commiting crimes than anyone else---other than the fact their very presence is a crime in and of itself--and an ongoing one as well.
No, the point was that crimes commited by people that have no legal right to be here would not have been commtited--had they not been here to commit them.

"Its not hurtful......as judged by the people in the best postion to know."

So the standard is that if the person being abused does not consider it abuse then its not a crime?
Not sure that I can agree with that.

Or are you essentially saying illegals should not be able to sue for mistreatment, cause after all--things are worse where they come from?
And if they do they should be told---"hey things are alot worse where you come from...case dismissed!"

I hesitate to point out that just because a situation might be "better" its not in evidence that its actually any good-----that I only get beaten up and robbed 2xs a week is most certainly "better" than being beaten and robbed 3xs a week---that don't mean its somehow "ok" for people to be beaten and robbed.
Is the person forcing a women to have sex in exchange for a job really doing anyone a favor because on this side of the border he only makes her do it a few times a month and her old boss on the other side of the border made her do 10 times a month???

I say hell no---stuff like that is wrong and needs to be stopped.

And NO you didn't say that is was "ok".....but what you saying is that essentially if they don't have a problem with it neither should I....and I don't see it that way.

If we at least knew how many illegals we had would could come up with better answers to your questions.
Not even knowing the numbers is part of the problem.

As far as a drain, many Border States do have some numbers on hospitals and eduaction etc and yes they do consider it a drain.

Here you seem to suggest there's a lot of serious crime associated with illegal immigration.

"I never said they were more "prone" to commiting crimes than anyone else---other than the fact their very presence is a crime in and of itself--and an ongoing one as well.
No, the point was that crimes commited by people that have no legal right to be here would not have been commtited--had they not been here to commit them."

And here, a few lines later, you seem to indicate that illegal immigrants pose no more of a crime threat than anyone else, and that crime reduction occuring after deportation would be accomplished only in proportion to mere population reduction. This is a pretty good summary of what I've been trying to capture by saying you argue just to argue. Which is it? Are they a disproportionate threat or not? Are you seriously proposing that to reduce horrid crimes we have to reduce our population size and that to do that we should get rid of the illegals? What an odd way to combat crime--reduce the number of occupants! Notice that doesn't reduce crimes per capita, a more useful measure... afterall, we care more about the job less rate than the absolute number of unemployed people (etc). Why not address crime by going after high yield areas... do something about gangs and drugs in particular... the corrections system... birth control amongst those at high risk of having criminal (generally, unwanted) kids? That would be more direct.

"So the standard is that if the person being abused does not consider it abuse then its not a crime? Not sure that I can agree with that."

No, you're missing the point. I'm not defining crime vs not crime. I'm saying that illegals are smart enough to decide for themselves which situation is preferable, that they've done so, and that being illegal here is clearly preferable, thus, it is pure BS when people say they want to kick out illegals to improve their lot in life. If you're fixated on the issue of "crime," the analogy would be, if a loving parent illegally "kidnaps" a child from a sexually abusive parent, what do you do? You don't return the kid to the rapist; you don't say the loving parent committed no crime. If you're really interested in the kid, you either tolerate the kidnapping crime and leave things alone (analogous to: tolerate the illegal immigration) or you fix the issue without sending the kid back (make the "kidnapping" legal by helping with protective orders and other documents, analogous to naturalizing or offering amnesty to the illegal).

"Or are you essentially saying illegals should not be able to sue for mistreatment, cause after all--things are worse where they come from?"

I said nothing of the sort, nor did I give you any reason to wonder. As a rule, I try to avoid committing to absolutes ("should not be able to sue") regarding vague circumstances ("mistreatments"). You go on to point out that saying that something is better does not equate with it being sufficiently good--well, that's true, and I've never said otherwise. You go on to suggest that I believe if a woman doesn't complain about being forced to have sex occasionally it shouldn't bother anyone, which is nonsense--I said, actually, only that people trying to deport her back to worse circumstances shouldn't claim that they're acting in her interest. C'mon--I've made this pretty freakin' clear in a series of posts, and yet you insist on misrepresenting my statements. Are you Karl Rove or something? Read my posts.

I'm well aware that border states such as my state of residence (CA) consider it a "drain" to provide medical care and education to a large number of probably low-tax paying illegals. That's not a surprise nor is it the key measure to attend to. The real issue is what is the best management solution. Afterall, alcoholism was a drain on society, and Prohibition failed to solve its problems AND turned law abiding people into criminals, created a new underground illegal economy, and added enforcement costs.

I don't "suggest" that you get "serious crime" with illegal immigration, Fed/State LEO's/Organizations have already established that you do.

No, that is not what I'm saying at all---your mixing 2 different answers/examples to 2 different questions....or perhaps I didn't state one answer strongly enough.
You seem to be consfusing that although any given single person may or may not be a direct danger...ie the guy squatting in your hourse for example----if you expand the numbers to millions of people your are, by dent of sheer statistical probability, going to get larger numbers of dangerous people.

Its not a question of "disproprtionate threat" that is again, single issue frameing---there are many problems with unchecked illegal immigration.

Nope, I'm not missing the point at all.......I can both feel compassion for exploited and abused illegals and still think they should not be here.
Its really not an "either/or" position as far as I'm concerned.
I can feel for a persons plight and not want them exploited or abused and still (regretfully) think that they should be deported.

If I may go back to prior example, the same general way that you might want an illegal squatter removed from your home......but you presumably would want them removed as gently as circumstances allow.
You both want them gone and resonably well treated at the same time.

Lets not forget that there are huge numbers of just as needy people that are following the rules and getting here legally.

Solutions?

I'm all ears, the first step would be to get a real handle on just how many illegals we really are dealing with.

"You seem to be consfusing that although any given single person may or may not be a direct danger...ie the guy squatting in your hourse for example----if you expand the numbers to millions of people your are, by dent of sheer statistical probability, going to get larger numbers of dangerous people."

There we go You want to reduce crime by fighting illegal immigration because of the mechanism of population reduction. You've said that clearly enough. My opinion is: that's a ridiculous way to fight crime. Reduce the total number of crimes by reducing the number of people. Sheesh.

"Nope, I'm not missing the point at all.......I can both feel compassion for exploited and abused illegals and still think they should not be here."

Then you have missed the point completely. I didn't say you couldn't care about them and kick them out for other reasons. I said you shouldn't SAY you're interested in kicking them out because you care about them, because kicking them out makes their situation worse by the only standards that matter: theirs. I can't state this any more plainly.

There isn't much else to say except respond to your reasonable call for solutions.

I don't have good solutions. Haven't heard a whole lot of promising ideas, except one based on cause and effect: just as there will always be a way to get drugs into the country if there is a demand for them, there will always be illegal immigration while there is a demand for it. The cause of the demand is the wealth disparity across the US-Mex border, the greatest in the universe. The solution: develop northern mexico's economic state.

And no, I don't know how to do that. But one has to get creative. I did read in the NEJM that the US would save money fighting TB (largely mexican) if they worked on TB control in Mexico itself.

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